the orthodox betrayal: how german christians embraced and
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Georgia Southern UniversityDigital Commons@Georgia Southern
University Honors Program Theses
2016
The Orthodox Betrayal: How German ChristiansEmbraced and Taught Nazism and Sparked aChristian Battle.William D. WilsonGeorgia Southern University
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Recommended CitationWilson, William D., "The Orthodox Betrayal: How German Christians Embraced and Taught Nazism and Sparked a Christian Battle."(2016). University Honors Program Theses. 160.https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses/160
The Orthodox Betrayal:
How German Christians Embraced and Taught Nazism and Sparked a Christian
Battle.
An Honors Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in
History.
By:
William D. Wilson
Under the mentorship of Brian K. Feltman
Abstract
During the years of the Nazi regime in Germany, the government introduced a
doctrine known as Gleichschaltung (coordination). Gleichschaltung attempted to force
the German people to conform to Nazi ideology. As a result of Gleichschaltung the
Deutsche Christens (German Christians) diminished the importance of the Old
Testament, rejected the biblical Jesus, and propagated proper Nazi gender roles. This
thesis will argue that Deutsche Christen movement became the driving force of Nazi
ideology within the Protestant Church and quickly dissented from orthodox Christian
theology becoming heretical. The Deutsche Christen heresy was unique to Germany and
could have only been formed within the borders and historical context of the German
nation. This heresy created a division within the established Protestant Church. As the
division grew the heretics and the orthodox members struggled for power. This struggle
between orthodox German Protestants and the Deutsche Christens, known as the
Kirchenkampf (church struggle), resulted in the orthodox Christians forming the
Confessing Church. Subsequently, the Confessing Church insured that the Protestant
church, as an institution, rejected the Nazi’s attempt to force the German citizens to
comply their ideologies.
Thesis Mentor: _______________________
Dr. Brian K. Feltman
Honors Director: _____________________
Dr. Steven Engel
Spring 2016
History Department
University Honors Program
Georgia Southern University
2
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction: The German Christians and Their Unique Heresy
3
Chapter Two: The Source Analysis
7
Chapter Three: The German Christian Doctrines
12
Chapter Four: The Influences on the German Christian Movement
22
Chapter Five: The German Christians Become Nazi Educators
28
Chapter Six: Nazi Resistance and the Confessing Church
36
Chapter Seven: The Legacy of the German Christians
41
Chapter Eight: Conclusion
43
3
Chapter One: Introduction: The German Christians and Their Unique Heresy
As May 1934 drew to a close many of Germany’s most prominent theologians
and pastors met in a small German city called Barmen. The birthplace of Fredrick Engels,
Barmen was actually a suburb of the larger city, Wuppertal, on the Wupper River. The
fact that the one of the fathers of Communism, Engels, was born in Barmen was only
appropriate, because the work that was done by these pastors and theologians constituted
nothing less than a revolution. After three days of meetings, the Pastor’s Emergency
League produced a document that they called the Barmen Declaration.
With the Barmen Declaration a church movement known as the Bekennende
Kirche (Confessing Church) was born. The Confessing Church would become an
opposing force to the National Socialist party and the splinter Nazi movement, the
Deutsche Christens (German Christians). The primary author of the document was the
most respected theologian of the twentieth century and one of the most formidable
academics in German history, Karl Barth. After the document was finally complete,
Barth remarked that his writing had been, “fortified by strong coffee and one or two
Brazilian cigars.”1 As Barth finished his expensive cigars and the smoke cleared from the
room full of theologically conservative Protestant pastors and professors, the
Kirchenkampf (church struggle) officially began. Although it took until May 1934 to
distinguish clear battle lines of the Kirchenkampf, the formations of the struggle began
over a year earlier.
1933 was a pivotal year in German history. This was the year that the German
government landed firmly in control of the National Socialist party and Adolf Hitler.
Shortly after coming to power, the Nazi party, led by Hitler, introduced a doctrine known
1 Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 222.
4
as Gleichschaltung (bringing into line). This Nazi policy intended to bring all parts of
German society into coordination with the National Socialist ideology, making what
Hitler called a “Total State.”2 In other words, the National Socialists wanted to nazify
Germany. The Protestant Church, among other institutions, was not exempt from this
expectation of conformity.
As Gleichschaltung began, the National Socialists had a particular interest in
bringing the church into line with Nazi principles. However, this was not because the
Nazis were Christians. The National Socialist movement could never be defined as a
Christian movement.3 The foundational ideologies of the two movements were absolutely
incompatible. Hitler detested Christian teaching, primarily because it offered him no
obvious political advantage and gave of the aura of weakness. Christian teaching was
useless to Nazi ideology because it taught “meekness and flabbiness.” This was the exact
opposite of a Nazi ideology that taught “ruthlessness and strength.”4 Nevertheless, as the
Nazi party sought to bring the German society into line with its ideological extremism, it
sought to conform the Protestant Church. In reality, the Nazis sought the institution’s
forty million members more than the establishment itself.
The Protestant Church inside Germany at the beginning of the 1930’s was made
up of twenty-eight regional church bodies that were evangelical, and for the most part,
theologically conservative. Although the rise of textual criticism in German theological
universities brought in a wave of liberalism that grew rather rampantly in the German
church, this new found freedom in Biblical scholarship left some institutions within the
2 Michael Burleigh, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge University Press: 1991), 10. 3 Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 (New York:
Cambridge, 2003), 3. 4 Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943, (Garden City: Doubleday, 1948), 375.
5
theological framework of the Protestant Church easily susceptible to the Nazis’
Gleichschaltung doctrine. Historian Robert Erickson tells us that theology as a discipline
was easily pressured by the Gleichschaltung movement and certain Protestant theologians
easily incorporated Nazi principles into their theology.5 However, the Protestant Church
as a whole was not so easily enticed by the Nazi worldview.
In an attempt to make the Nazi ideology more prominent within the church, a
splinter movement of the Nazi party called the Deutsche Christens became the battering
ram of Nazi principles inside the protestant community. As Richard Steigmann-Gall
explains in The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945, the German
Christian movement was “intent on suffusing Protestant Christianity with the anti-
Christian tenets of its parent movement.”6 With the Deutsche Christens eager to please
the Nazi elites a heresy soon developed, a heresy that was unique to any before it.
History shows us that any time a teaching breaks from orthodoxy and becomes
heretical a struggle for the truth ensues. Time and again the early church confirmed this;
whether it was Ignatius battling the Gnostics or Augustine battling Pelagius, when a
betrayal of the truth happens a war over the correct doctrine is inevitable. The same was
true in Nazi Germany when the Protestant Church was challenged by the heretical pro-
Nazi German Christians. As the theological and ecclesiastical battle ensued, the
Protestant Church was ripped apart by the Kirchenkampf (church struggle). Thus, the
Kirchenkampf would become the battle for the Protestant Church in Germany during the
years of the Nazi regime.
5 Robert P. Erickson, “The Gotten University Theological Faculty: A Test Case in Gleichschaltung and
Denazification.” The Journal of Central European History 17, no. 4 (December 1984): 356. 6 Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, 2.
6
The two sides of this battle consisted of the German Christian movement and the
Confessing Church movement. One side of the battle, the German Christians claimed,
“Hitler stood under a divine command to save the German people, both economically and
spiritually,”7 while the other side, the Confessing Church, exclaimed, “The men who
have seized the Church leadership in the Reich and the states have divorced themselves
from the Christian Church.”8 Despite both divisions remaining within the official
Protestant Church, the Kirchenkampf grew intense as the battle for rightful leadership of
the church ensued.9
The battle for the Protestant Church within Germany during the Nazi reign is no
historically insignificant matter. When the scope of the battle is considered, the historical
significance is obvious. The Protestant Church consisted of forty million members during
this time, most of whom remained neutral.10 Had any one side prevailed during the
Kirchenkampf, Germany’s future may have looked drastically different.
The historical narrative surrounding the German Church struggle has traditionally
focused on the Nazi state’s oppression of the Confessing Church and the persecution of
some of its most prominent members. While this field is certainly important, scholars
have not focused on the ultimate resistance of the Protestant Church to the Nazi state that
is present in the Confessing movement. Likewise, there has been an incredible amount of
research centered on the betrayal of the German Christian movement. However, very
7 Susannah Heschel, “Nazifying Christian Theology: Walter Grundmann and the Institute for the Study and
Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Christian life,” Church History 63, no. 4 (December 1994),
588. 8 The Confessing Church: Excerpt from the Declaration of the Second Confessing Synod of the German
Protestant Church in Berlin-Dahlem (October 20, 1934). http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-
dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1569 Accessed January 14, 2016. 9 Doris L. Bergen, “Germany Is Our Mission—Christ Is Our Strength!” The Wehrmacht Chaplaincy and
the “German Christian” Movement,” Church History 66, no. 3 (September 1997): 523. 10 Ibid.
7
little scholarship has addressed the uniqueness of the German Christian heresy and its
impact on the Protestant Church as it moved to force Nazi ideology among German
Protestants. This thesis will argue that the Deutsche Christen movement was a unique
heretical movement that could have only occurred in the confines of Nazi Germany.
Furthermore, it will also argue that the Deutsche Christen movement was the largest asset
to the Nazi doctrine of Gleichschaltung doctrine within the Protestant Church, and
because of their push for conformity to Nazi ideology, the Kirchenkampf was formed.
8
Chapter Two: Source Analysis
As a whole, the Church Struggle has not been the most heavily researched area
from a historiographical stand point. Many theologians have examined the doctrinal
impacts of the church division. However, few historical scholars have made significant
headway into the field of the German Church struggle. Without doubt, Doris Bergen has
done the most extensive research in this area, particularly in relation to the German
Christian heresy. In her influential work Twisted Cross, Bergen correctly identified the
German Christian movement as heretical, or in her words, “anti-Christian.”11 Bergen also
outlined the core foundations of the German Christian movement. Doris Bergen’s work
in identifying the doctrines of the German Christian movement allows one to formulate
an argument about the uniqueness of the German Christian heresy.
Although Bergen’s research lays the foundation for the largest part of this thesis,
the historiographical conclusions reached in this work are slightly different than those
that she proposes. Bergen argues that the German Christian movement should be seen as
heretical based on two of its formational doctrines, anti-Semitism and anti-feminism.
While the Christian faith in no way condones anti-Semitic teaching, this teaching alone
cannot constitute heresy because of Christianity’s long and unfortunate history of
violence against Jewish people. Although I strongly agree with Bergen about the heretical
status of the German Christian movement, there must be more concrete evidence of
dissent from orthodoxy to substantiate such strong claims.
I will argue that the German Christian movement’s obsession with race, not
necessarily its anti-Semitism, was the foremost reason that the movement descended from
11 Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement Inside the Third Reich, (Chapel Hill,
NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 192.
9
orthodox theology. The German Christians’ ideas of anti-Semitism stemmed from a
heretical conception of race and ethnicity. The German Christians not only proposed anti-
Semitic teaching, but the exclusion of Jewish people from the church body and the
complete ecclesiastical restructuring of the church based solely on their conceptions of
Volk. This represents a bold, obvious, and unique heresy. In light of my conclusions, this
thesis contributes to the small but growing historiographical work on the German
Christian movement by examining the relationship between the Nazi concept of Volk and
how other institutions adopted this concept in response to Gleichschaltung.
In order to argue for the uniqueness of the German Christian heresy, largely using
Bergen’s research and primary source documents such as letters and propaganda, I will
examine the foundations of the German Christian heresy and place them in the broader
context of German history. Primary sources such as the aforementioned ones help
provide a historical framework for the German Christian movement. When viewed in the
proper historical narrative it becomes obvious that the heresy of the German Christians
was destined to form in the German nation and thrived as a heresy that most likely could
have survived nowhere else.
As I argue for the uniqueness of the German Christian heresy and its inevitable
formations in the German state, I step into the largest historiographical arena in the field
of German history, and the Sonderweg debate. Sonderweg is a German word that means
“special path.” As the history of Germany has been examined, particularly in light of the
twentieth century catastrophes, scholars developed a theory that places Germany on a
special path that reveals the continuity of certain moments within the history of the
German lands. Helmut Walsser Smith defines the Sonderweg debate well when he writes,
10
“As that debate turned on the question of what made Germany peculiar, it led historians
to concentrate on even slimmer strands of continuity, as continuity defined as what was
unique in German history and how that uniqueness carried over and contributed to mid-
twentieth century catastrophes.”12 Some historians consider the Sonderweg so crucial to
German history that they go so far as to claim that the entire German experience was
absolutely different than that of other country in Europe. A.J.P. Taylor summarized this
position well when in his benchmark work on German history, The Course of German
History, he wrote, “Over the course of one thousand years the Germans have experience
everything except normality.”13
When it comes to the German Christian heresy, it is impossible not to discuss the
Sonderweg. The German Christian movement was born out of the continuities that
existed in Germany long before the Nazi rise to power. Similarly, the German Christian
heresy would not have been a sustainable movement outside the framework of Nazi
Germany. It was the continuity between the components such as liberal theology, a
tradition of anti-Semitism, and German fore fathers such as Martin Luther, combined
with a Nazi state the allowed the German Christian movement to mature.14 This thesis
contributes to the discussion of the German Sonderweg by arguing that there was a
continuity in German history that led to the formations of the German Christian
movement.
12 Helmut Wallser Smith, The Continuities of German History (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 12. 13 A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1945), 1. 14 One note on Continuity. Continuity does not necessarily mean the direct determination of historical
events (x leads to y). Instead continuity represents a lose thread that ties one historical even to another (y is
possible because x happened). Smith clarifies well, “Continuity was not a straight line to murder and
genocide.” (Smith, The Continuities of German History, 215).
11
One other respect in which my research differs from Bergen’s is related to
usefulness of the German Christian Movement to its parent movement, National
Socialism. In her book, Twisted Cross, Bergen argues that the German Christians were
largely ignored and irrelevant to the Nazi party. She even goes so far as to argue that the
German Christians, “disagreed with Hitler.”15 However, this claim seems somewhat
short-sighted considering the ideological foundations of the German Christian movement.
The movement had almost identical purposes to those of National Socialism and was
only able to flourish under Nazi ideology. The relationship between the Nazi state and the
German Christians is best described by Karl Barth, writing in 1934. Barth claimed, “For
them the recognition of the ‘Supremacy of the National Socialist state’ is not only a civic
duty, not only a matter of political conviction, but a matter of faith, and they demand a
church that agrees with them on this.”16 It would be even more unwise to deem the
German Christian movement irrelevant to the National Socialists. Particularly in the year
1933,17 and even more so during the buildup to and during the Second World War, the
German Christian movement was the single greatest promoter of Nazi ideology in the
Protestant Church.
In order to prove my claims about the significance of the German Christian’s
movement for ideological conformity to Nazi principles I will use primary sources that
show the obvious drive the German Christians felt to push the Protestant Church into line
with Nazi doctrine. Among those primary sources are speeches, revised additions of the
gospels, revised German hymnbooks, and other German Christian theological works.
15 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 1. 16 Karl Barth, Theological Existence Today, 1934. Translated in Mary M. Solberg, A Church Undone:
Documents from the German Christian Faith Movement (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 89. 17 This was the year in which the Nazis used the German Christians to control the church government.
12
The most popular examples of these sources come from speeches from German Christian
leaders such as Reinhold Kraus and other German pastors, as well as German Christian
propaganda that was spread throughout the Third Reich. Whether or not the Nazi
government recognized the work of the German Christians is irrelevant; the sources show
that the German Christians were the most significant source of Nazi education within the
Protestant Church.
The resources for information on the Confessing Church are just as scarce as
those for the German Christian field. Most work on the Confessing Church has been
made by far more theologically concerned writers. It is for this reason many theological
journals are referenced in this work. Despite significant lack of research into the topic of
the Confessing Church as a movement, there has been much written about individuals
within the Confessing Church movement, namely Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Consequently,
biographical accounts of Bonhoeffer’s life are significant in the development of
Confessing Church research, and in particular that of the Confessing Church’s response
to the Aryan Paragraph. Arguably, the most important Bonhoeffer biography comes from
Bonhoeffer’s close friend, Eberhard Bethge. In his book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A
Biography, Bethge shows the response of Bonhoeffer and other Confessing Church
members to the German Christian’s attempts of Nazifying the Church.18
The primary resources used in the research concerning the Confessing Church are
made up of letters of correspondence between members, essays and sermons written by
active members, and, perhaps most important, the foundational document of the
18 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000).
13
Confessing Church—the Barmen Declaration. These documents provide an in-depth and
first-hand account of the Confessing Church’s account of the Church struggle.
14
Chapter Three: The German Christian Doctrines
In order to accurately understand the Kirchenkampf there must be an adequate
understanding of the German Christian Faith Movement. The formations of the German
Christian movement were unique in comparison to other heretical movements. This
movement could have only been formed within the confines of the German nation and
could have only thrived under the Nazi regime. In order to understand this unique heresy
it is important to understand two pieces of information. First, the primary doctrines or
beliefs of the German Christians must be accurately explained; second, the influences
upon the German Christian movement should be examined to understand the historical
context surrounding the movement.
Doctrines
The doctrines of the German Christian movement dissented from orthodox
Protestant Christianity and became the primary reason for the ensuing Kirchenkampf. The
German Christian movement was centered on multiple pillars that would prove more
important than Jesus, the Bible, or nineteen hundred years of Orthodoxy. First, the
movement was founded primarily upon obsessive focus on the German Volk (or race for
their purposes). Secondly, the German Christians obsessively promoted a Nazified
militant version of masculinity and worked to diminish femininity in the church. The last
foundational doctrine of the German Christians movement was their Supra-confessional
aspirations.
The doctrine of greatest value to the German Christian movement was the
centrality of the German Volk. The German Christians’ removed the cross from the center
of their religion and replaced it with ideas of Volkstum (race). This made the notion of
15
race the authoritative reasoning behind the German Christian movement, which is why
the German Christian movement and National Socialism are so intimately intertwined. At
their core both movements are centered on Volk, and Volkstum. Without these central
doctrines, both movements do not exist.
The German Christians’ ideas about race were as authoritative as the Bible would
have been in most other Reformed traditions.19 This represented the essence of the
German Christian heresy to the great theologian Karl Barth. Barth wrote, “Our protest
must be directed at the source of all these individual heresies: at the fact that, next to the
holy scripture as the sole revelation from God, the German Christians claim Volkstum, its
past and political present, as a second revelation.”20 The German Christians had found a
new authority for the Christian life and it was not the Protestant Bible, it was the German
Volk.
Race determined everything within the German Christian church. The German
Christians felt that they had a divine responsibility to uphold the racial laws God had
revealed to them. When the German Christians published their ten guidelines in 1932
most of them were centered on race. The seventh point read, “We see in race, Volkstrum,
and nation, laws of life that God has bequeathed and entrusted to us. It is God’s law that
we concern ourselves with their preservation. Mixing of races, therefore, is to be
opposed.” Likewise, point nine read, “In the Mission to the Jews we see a serious threat
to our Volkstum. That mission is the entryway for foreign blood into the body of our Volk.
We reject missions to the Jews as long as Jews possess citizenship and hence the danger
of racial fraud and bastardization exists. Marriage between Germans and Jews
19 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 23. 20 Quoted in Ibid, 21.
16
particularly is to be forbidden.”21 The German Christian’s stance on intermarriage would
be clarified in 1933 in The Handbook of the German Christians, there the movement
declared a marriage of mixed nationalities to be against the will of God.22
It would turn out that Anti-Semitism was the main way that German Christian
ideas about race were expressed. It should come as no surprise that the German Christian
movement readily accepted anti-Semitism. Despite Orthodox Christianity's claims as a
religion of love and acceptance there is a tradition of contempt for Jews within church
history. Gregory Baum summarizes this tradition well when he said that there has always
been, “an abiding contempt among Christians for Jews and all things Jewish.”23
This tradition of anti-Semitism within the church had even manifested itself in
physical violence toward Jews. In writing about the history of the old church, church
historian David MacCulloch recounts how Franciscan and Dominican monks were
perhaps the largest, “exponents of anti-Semitism in medieval western Europe and were
deeply involved in some of the worst violence against Jewish communities.”24 Thus, with
a tradition so intimately intertwined with anti-Semitism it should not surprise us that the
German Christians so easily accepted hatred of the Jews. In fact, Walser Smith claims
that German anti-Semitism became even more, “deeply structured,” when it was
combined with the community of the church.25
The German Christian movement had already fortified its position on race and
anti-Semitism before the Nazi party took power in 1933. However, as the Nazi Party’s
21 Joachim Hossenfelder, The Original Guidelines of the German Christian Faith Movement, 1932.
Translated and cited in Solberg, A Church Undone, 43-52. 22 The Handbook of the German Christians, 1933. Translated in Solberg, A Church Undone, 172. 23 Saul S. Friedman, The Obermmergau Passion Play: A Lance Against Civilization, (Carbondale, 1984,)
119. 24 David MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 2004,) 24. 25 Smith, The Continuities of German History, 220.
17
power grew stronger, the German Christians sought to improve their standing with their
parent movement by showing their willingness to persecute Jews. The German Christian
movement sought to further exclude Jews from church life and keep the church “racially
pure” when adherents of the movement opened the Institute for Research into and
elimination of Jewish Influence in German Church life.26 The German Christian
movement also protected its membership and its Volk from Jewish “defilement” with
certain screening precautions. In 1933 the applications for memberships within German
Christian movement required a pledge of Aryan descent.27 Then, one year later, in 1935 a
newly adapted Combat and Faith Movement within the German Christian organization
included a more detailed clause that proclaimed, “I declare that I am of Aryan blood, as
well as that of both of my parents and my grandparents are of pure Aryan blood.”28
The discrimination against Jews by the German Christians grew stride in stride
with Nazi discrimination. The Nazis began to legally discriminate against Jews in 1935
with the advent of the Nuremberg Laws, which legally defined Jewishness as a race.
After the Nuremberg laws, many German Christians began to demand new churches
where congregations of “baptized Jews” could worship.29 The Nuremberg Laws ensured
that Jews were officially segregated from the rest of German society. The German
Christians wanted to make this true in the church life as well.
In order to reconcile their faith with this harsh anti-Semitism and church structure
built on race, the German Christians tried to purge Christianity of all things Jewish. This
would prove to be an infinite project and almost altogether futile. They accordingly
26 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 24. 27 Solberg, A Church Undone, 177. 28 Ibid. 29 Henrich Detel to Hossenfelder, 16 Sept. 1935, Bresalu, BA Potsdam, DC-I, 1933-35. Cited and translated
in Bergen, Twisted Cross, 333.
18
removed certain orthodox elements of Christianity and changed others to fit their
conception of the divine church structure. One element of Orthodox Christianity that was
almost entirely removed from the faith in the German Christian movement was the
existence of the Old Testament. The German Christians rejected the Old Testament by
denying its canonicity.30 In the 1933 Handbook of the German Christians the movement
called the Old Testament “the apostasy of the Jews and in that apostasy, their sin.”31
In other cases the German Christian movement did not deny canonicity, it simply
rewrote scripture to provide more anti-Semitic tones. In 1936 the Protestant Bishop of
Bremen tried to fortify the concept of anti-Semitic Christianity by publishing the first
edition of the anti-Semitic gospel of John.32 Others rewrote the gospels and excluded any
references to the Old Testament and any remarks of Jesus that seemed to give approval to
the Jews. Perhaps, the most shocking change that the movement produced was its
portrayal of Jesus. After the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the movement
was increasingly interested in “the question of whether was a Jew by blood.”33 To the
German Christians Jesus could not have possibly been a Jew, because Jesus opposed
Judaism. Thus, Jesus was adapted to fit the needs of the German Christian movement.
The German Christians redefined Jesus with one simple claim; he did not have
Jewish ancestry. The German Christians claimed Jesus was actually an Aryan. The
movement formulated that Jesus had been born to an Aryan Tribe in Galilee, and it got
support from theologians such as Emanuel Hirsch and theorists like Houston Stewart
Chamberlain. The core of the German Christians Christology centered on the
30 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 143. 31 Solberg, A Church Undone, 174. 32 Bergen, “Anti-Semitism in Germany,”334. 33 Organization for German Christianity, Jesus and the Jews, 1936. Translated in Solberg, A Church
Undone, 435.
19
presumption of Jesus’ anti-Semitism.34 In this movement Jesus was not only Aryan; he
was the Arch Anti-Semite. Many in the movement followed Joseph Goebbels calling
Jesus the, “first great enemy of the Jews.”35 Thus, the German Christians were able to call
themselves a Christian movement; however, the Jesus they identified with was, by all
accounts, a historical fallacy.
The anti-Semitism and volkish obsession within the German Christian movement
is unique because it only could have formed and flourished under conditions that were
equally obsessed with the Volk and equally anti-Semitic. Those conditions were
absolutely present in Nazi Germany. Thus, the German Christian movement became a
micro version of National Socialism within the Protestant Church, discriminating against
Jews and promoting the concept of the Aryan Volk.
Another foundational doctrine that made the German Christian movement unique
in its heresy was its obsessive promotion of militant masculinity. The traditional
Protestant Church did indeed have a hierarchy where gender roles were important, but in
the German Christian movement gender roles fed on a special time of hierarchy, one
fueled by Hitler’s militarism. The German Christian church aimed to include all Aryan
Germans, but within that inclusive Aryan Church the German Christians envisioned a
hierarchy based solely on gender.36 The German Christian movement preached a
masculine form of Christianity that was intended to attract young men, particularly men
in uniform.37 This concept of the manly church was intended to redeem the church from
34 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 156. 35 Joseph Goebbels, Michael (Verlag Fraz Eher, 1934), 82. (English: Michael: A Novel, Trans. Joachim
Neugroschel (New York: Amok Press, 1987). 36 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 61. 37 Bergen, “Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement,” 524.
20
the feminine view that it was part of the weak and feminine home front that cost
Germany the war in 1918.38
Germany had suffered a humiliating defeat at the end of the First World War, and
many maintained that Germany had only lost because the people at home were too weak
to finish the war. This forms part of the famous conspiracy known as, “the stab in the
back.”39 After the First World War, the German Christians adopted Nazi principles of
masculinity and the movement began to teach that men should act with firm masculinity
in both word and deed. Bergen explains how the movement began to become more
masculine with its vocabulary, writing , “Statements from the movement, in particular
those made by leading men, often used the adjectives mannlich and mannhaft to modify
the nouns church, Christianity, and faith.”40 The German Christians not only attached
positive adjectives to the promote masculinity in church life they also used negative
descriptions of femininity to ostracize men who did not measure up to the standard of
German Christian masculinity. Words such as weichlich (weak) were used in contrast to
mannlich to show the superior qualities. By attaching masculine adjectives to the Church
the German Christians made attempts to associate the church with images of masculinity
and manliness. The language of embracing struggle also added the German Christians’
masculine vocabulary. Hossenfelder, in battle language, called for the German Christians
to embrace struggle and fighting as part of natural life in his 1933 work Our Struggle. 41
38 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 66. 39 Paul von Hindenburg's Testimony before the Parliamentary Investigatory Committee ["The Stab in the
Back"] (November 18, 1919). From GHDI website. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-
dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3829. Accessed January 18, 2016. 40 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 62. 41 Joachim Hossenfelder, Our Struggle, 1933. Translated and cited in Solberg, A Church Undone, 230-248.
21
In order to provide the church with visual images, or deeds, of masculinity the
German Christians expressed the idea of combat within the church. The connotations of
manliness included a plethora of soldierly traits. Men in the German Christian church
should, “fight ruthlessly, exhibit hardness and heroism, and follow orders with discipline
and enthusiasm.”42 Over and over again, German Christian pastors called for men to
embrace their masculine destiny. In 1935, one German Christian pastor specifically
called from his church to be, “a church of men, not a church of women of both sexes.”43
It should be obvious that the German Christians’ concepts of masculinity are
almost synonymous with National Socialism’s ideas of manliness. In fact, German
Christians believed that National Socialism perfected the ideal German man. As the
Nazi’s promoted the ideal man, the German Christians attached themselves to Nazi
manliness in order to define a masculinity fit for a German Christian. For example, in
1933 Hossenfelder fondly proclaimed the German Christian movement the, “storm
troopers of the church,” clarifying, “both groups fight in the spirit of National Socialism
for the manly external and internal realization of the Third Reich.”44
The German Christian movement also had specifically designated roles for
women almost identical to those of National Socialism. While the men were supposed to
be the epitome of a German soldier and masculinity, the women were resigned to the
offices of the familial roles of wives and mothers. One historian summarizes the popular
stereotype that dominated gender roles writing, “Women were (supposedly) more
42 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 63. 43 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 63. 44 Hossenfelder, “DerSonntagdes Hausvaters,” Evangelium im Dritten Reich, no. 49 (Dec. 1933).
Translated and cited in Twisted Cross, 516.
22
emotional, less rational, and more spiritual than men.”45 Because of their supposed
superior spirituality the women were made the moral compass of the German Christian
movement.
When all of the German Christians ideas about Gender roles are considered, the
dissentions from orthodoxy become clear. Traditional Christian doctrine teaches that men
and women were of complete equal dignity, both made in the image of God (Imago Dei).
While gender roles are not necessarily unique to the German Christian movement,
German Christians’ were unique from other Christian movements in their promotion of
militant masculinity and suppression of femininity. Women were suppressed in many
aspects of societal life, but promoted as virtue bearers. Men, on the other hand, were
crude and soldierly, showing no signs of emotions or anything else that could be
mistaken for femininity.46 This promotion of a superior sexuality is nothing short of
heresy.
The last foundational doctrine of the German Christian movement was its supra-
confessional position. The goal of a united confessional church was an unavoidable
byproduct of the German Christian’s beliefs about race. If the church were to truly be the
“people’s church” it would have to encompass all the people of the German Volk. The
movement saw divisions such as denominations and or sects as a “renunciation of
God.”47 Although the majority of Germany was Protestant, almost one-third of the
German population was Catholic, a fraction that represented twenty million people.
Therefore, the German Christians needed to produce an ideal supra-confessional church
45 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 125. 46 See George Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996). 47 Otto Brokelschen, What do German Christians Want?: 118 Questions and Answers. Translated in
Solberg, A Church Undone, 418.
23
that found its identity on German nationalism and the purity of their race rather than
Catholic or Protestant doctrine. This fairy tale church would prove to be an unattainable
aspiration.
In order to unite Protestants and Catholics, German Christians initially tried to
focus on the things that the two confessions shared to provide a common ground for
union. However, the German Christians would soon find that very little common ground
existed. The German Christians began their quest for unity by examining common rituals;
though, in most cases, rituals provided stark differences rather than similarity. The
Catholics practiced seven sacraments; the Protestants practiced two in most cases. The
Catholics practiced very strict services called Mass which centered on the sacrament of
Communion; the Protestants were far less strict in their worship, centering it on the
exposition of the Bible. The Catholics practiced public confession; the Protestants
emphasized personal prayer. The quest for unity based upon similar rituals was
seemingly hopeless. However, if the German Christians could not find an example of a
shared ritual they would create one. One German Christian publication offered new forms
of rituals to promote Christian unity among Germans. However, the only concrete
example that he could offer was prayer using the Lord’s Prayer as a model. 48
When the common ground could not be found in the ritual of the two confessions
the German Christians often turned to conceptions of the state to provide a sense of unity.
Perhaps the love of the nation could do what the individual churches could not. At one
German Christian event the speaker proclaimed that confessional status or denomination
was unimportant. What mattered, the speaker insisted, was whether or not members
48 Fr. De Fries, Dortmund., “Aus der Bewegung,” Briefe an Deutsche Christen, no. 17 (Sept. 1936): 195.
Quoted in Twisted Cross, 104.
24
believed in the state of the, “eternal Germany.”49 Indeed many advocates of the supra-
confessional church inside the German Christian movement believed that defense of the
state itself would serve the incentive for Catholics and Protestants alike to unite under the
banner of One People—One Faith.50
The German Christians did not rely only on love of the nation and rituals to
provide the ground for confessional union. The German Christians believed that a
common enemy would serve as a kick start toward confessional unity. That perfect
enemy was already present in Germany—the Jews. Hostility toward the Jews connected
the Protestant and the Catholics like few other things could. The enemy of my enemy is
my friend. The Nazis and the German Christians used this old truth to their advantage.
Otto Brokelschen summarizes the German Christian position well, noting, “The National
Church Union of German Christians engages for the defeat and removal of everything
having a Jewish or foreign spirit in church teachings.”51 Nevertheless, in the end not even
this shared anti-Semitism would prove to be enough overcome the confessional
differences within German churches. Some scholars have even argued that it only
provided more grounds for confessional divide. 52
While the German Christians cannot be called heretical solely for their desire to
see a united Christian church, the way in which they approached this goal screams
heresy. The German Christians were completely willing to disregard doctrines, of both
confessions, in order to unite the church. Orthodoxy was thrown to the wolves in the
German Christians’ attempts to unite the church.
49 No Author, “Schnellbrief fur Glieder der Bekennenden Kirche, “ no 21 (Berlin-Dahlem, 1 Sugust 1935,
1. From “Anti-Semitism in Germany,” 337. 50 Brokelschen, What do German Christians Want?,418. 51 Brokelschen, What do German Christians Want?,418. 52 Bergen, “Anti-Semitism in Germany,” 331.
25
26
Chapter Four: The Influence on the German Christian Movement
The German Christian movement was built around the foundational doctrines of
Volkish obsession, Nazi militant masculinity, and supra-confessional aspirations. German
Christians defined Christianity by race and exclusion of Jewish people. They formed their
church structure based on obsessive masculinity and suppressive gender ideals. Lastly
they defined themselves as a supra confessional church that sought to unite the true
German church encompassing the entire German Volk. These three doctrines alone make
the German Christian movement unique, but the historical context in which the
movement formed, and the historical influences that shaped it, proved crucial to the
formation and survival of the movement and make the German Christian movement truly
unique to their time period and geographical area. In essence this uniqueness means that
the German Christian Faith Movement could not have formed upon such radical doctrines
and sustained itself upon them in any other time period and in any other geographical
area outside of Nazi Germany. The German Christian movement represents the very idea
of the continuity of German history. An examination of the historical influences will
prove this to be true.
The German Christians formed within the borders of the German nation. There
are three key movements and people that are found within Germany that shaped and
influenced the manifestation of the German Christian Faith Movement. The first
influence upon the German Christians was the father of the Reformation, Martin
Luther. In Germany, Christianity itself is tied to Martin Luther. As Metaxas writes, “His
(Luther’s) authority to define what it meant to be German (and) Christian was
27
unquestioned.”53 Luther’s authority to define such large roles would be advantageous to
the German Christians as they looked to Luther to provide legitimacy to their own radical
doctrines. In Luther the German Christians found enough anti-Jewishness to validate their
ideas about race and exclusion of the Jews from the ecclesiastical structure. Metaxas
points out Luther’s history and attitude toward the Jews is “confusing, and not to say,
deeply disturbing.”54
In the beginning of Luther’s career, his attitude toward the Jews was somewhat
progressive, especially considering the time in which he lived. Luther never doubted that
a Jew could become a Christian. There are even cases when Luther lamented the way in
which modern Christians treated the Jewish people. In one essay commenting on the
Christians’ bigotry, Luther wrote that had he been born a Jew he would have rather,
“become a hog than a Christian.”55 Although Luther was initially favorable toward the
Jews, as his health began to unravel his attitude toward the Jewish people, along with his
attitude toward almost everything else, deteriorated.56
Luther struggled with gastrointestinal issues his whole life. Hemorrhoids and
constipation alongside an already unhealthy German diet caused many days of intense
pain for Luther. By 1528, Luther conspired in his head that Jews had tried to assassinate
him after he had an unfortunate digestive episode following a kosher meal. As his health
problems ballooned so too did his nasty attitude toward the Jewish people. It was in this
context that he wrote “Von den Juden und Iren Lugen” (On the Jews and Their Lies). In
53 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 91. 54 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 91. 55 Martin, Luther, "MARTIN LUTHER, "That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew" (1523)," Council of Centers
on Jewish-Christian Relations, accessed April 2, 2015. http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-
texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/272-luther-1523. 56 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 98.
28
this essay it was obvious that Luther’s feelings towards the Jews had come full circle. At
one point in the essay Luther described them as a “base and whoring people.”57 The man
who had once admired the Jews sank into a dark abyss of hatred.
The German Christians often quoted Luther as the foundation for their bitter anti-
Semitism. One German Christian pastor went so far as to say, “In Martin Luther we have
received the spiritual foundations for German Christianity.”58 It was exceptionally easy to
justify their claims about Luther. To do so they just turned to their favorite Lutheran
work, “On the Jews and Their Lies.” Often times Luther was presented as the first
champion of German Christian anti-Semitism.59 Luther’s attitudes toward the Jews in his
latter life formed the perfect example of the ideal anti- Semitic attitude of a German
Christian. In fact, one German Christian publication called for all German Christians to
embrace an attitude of hardness toward the Jews similar to that of Martin Luther’s.60 The
German Christians so longed for the Christians in Germany to adopt Luther’s attitude that
there were even religious instruction books in circulation by 1940 that quoted Luther’s
direction to “set their synagogues and schools on fire, and whatever will not burn, heap
dirt upon.”61 Without this long standing history of intolerance and hatred the German
Christians would not have been able to sustain their movement.
Another major influence that made the formations and flourishing of the German
Christian movement possible was the invention of liberal theology and Biblical criticism.
Liberal theology was birthed in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century and
57 Martin Luther, "Anti-Semitism: Martin Luther - "The Jews & Their Lies," Jewish Virtual Library,
accessed April 2, 2015. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html. 58 Siegfried Leffler, Christ in Germany’s Third Reich: The Nature, the Path, and the Goal of the German
Christian Church Movement, 353. See Solberg, A Church Undone, 353. 59 Bergen, “Anti-Semitism in Germany,” 333. 60 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 28. 61 Bergen, Anti-Semitism in Germany,” 333.
29
flourished under theologians such as Adolf von Harnack. Harnack had himself questioned
the canonicity of the Old Testament long before the German Christian movement formed.
Some historians have even claimed that Harnack maintained the Old Testament should be
removed from the Bible altogether.62
Another famous liberal theologian that would in time be beneficial to the German
Christian cause was Emanuel Hirsch. In Hirsch’s most notable work, Deutschlands
Schicksal, he took a series of speeches delivered to his students and formed a history of
the German lands from a theistic perspective. However, his liberalism and Volkish
obsession were obvious. In the introduction to his work he proposed a theme of unity that
the German Christians would later adopt in efforts to overcome confessional divides.
Hirsch wrote “the only point of unity in Germany, for the more noble among us is the
concern for Germany’s fate.”63 Hirsch would later go on to rewrite three of the four
gospels to provide less Hebraisms and Jewish elements.64
The liberal theologians of Harnack and Hirsch’s day described themselves as
historically-critical. Theological historical criticism was born in Germany. Historically
critical theologians found it unscientific to speculate on things outside of the text of
scripture itself. The nature of God was not important, as what mattered were the texts and
the historical events those texts revealed. However, what these theologians failed to
understand was that was when their study was separated from the nature of God, they left
God open to be refashioned by whatever they deemed relevant in the texts. Instead of
letting the text reveal the true nature of God, these theologians formed a picture of the
62 Robert Erickson, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch, (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 50. 63 Erickson, Theologians under Hitler, 127. 64 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 127.
30
God they wanted by making sacred religious texts changeable and optional. Opponents of
the liberal theologians, such as Karl Barth, would later argue that the text were not only
historical document, but “Agents of Revelation.” Therefore, they could not be subject to
change.
Such a rich history of biblical criticism and liberal theology made it exceptionally
easy for the German Christians to decide for themselves what should and should not be a
part of the Bible. The German Christians were not doing anything new when they
rewrote scripture or rejected it all together. The history of liberal theology in Germany
made it possible for a movement that rejected large portions of the Bible and rewrote
other parts to flourish within a society. Indeed, the field of historically critical theology
allowed German Christendom to easily redefine the nature of God in order to benefit the
German Christian movement and National Socialism. When the German Christians
scratched large parts of sacred texts they were simply adopting an element that already
existed within their society.
The life and legacy of Martin Luther, as well as the traditions of liberal theology
that existed in Germany, were exceptionally influential to the formation and survival of
the German Christian movement. Yet, no other movement was as influential to the
German Christian Faith Movement as the National Socialist Party. The German
Christians were already an established movement before the National Socialists came to
power in 1933. Nonetheless, the movement was absolutely irrelevant before the rise of
the Nazis. The National Socialists gave the German Christian Movement its purpose for
existence. The very life of the faith movement stemmed from the Nazis. Furthermore, the
Nazi party gave the German Christian party a certain amount of legitimacy that it had not
31
had before and would not have had otherwise. With the Nazis proclaiming the same
doctrines as the faith movement, it gave the German Christians a significant amount of
influence. As this legitimacy, grew the German Christians attached themselves to the
Nazi party and grew bolder in their already controversial doctrines.
As the National Socialist Party began to assert its ideas of anti-Semitism the
German Christians began to gain confidence in their proclamations of hatred toward the
Jews. Their conceptions of Volk and anti-Semitism were in large part formed to please
their parent movement. There is also no doubt that the German Christians obsessive
promotion of militant masculinity and restrictive femininity were further cemented by the
Nazi’s ideas of the home front and an ideal masculine German solider.65
The supra- confessional aspirations of the German Christian movement stem from
the Nazi movement as well. The National Socialists’ main goal was to unite the German
Volk as one. Although the German Christian movement was established before the Nazis
came to power, it is absolutely certain that it would not have flourished had it not been
for the Nazi movement. In fact, this movement could not have been produced in any
other historical context outside of the one Germany offered through Martin Luther’s
legacy, liberal theology, and the Nazi party.
With its foundations firmly rooted in Nazism and its goals seemingly identical to
Nazism’s, the German Christian Faith Movement would prove to be useful, at least
initially, to the Nazi party. With the National Socialists attempting to bring the totality of
German society into line with its radical racism the Nazis were going to need help in
institutions across the nation. One institution that would be difficult to infiltrate would be
the Protestant Church; however, with heretical German Christians on board they would
65 Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland (New York: Routledge, 1987).
32
have a driving force of Nazification in the Protestant Church. Thus, the German
Christians would become the supreme educators of the Nazis in the German Evangelical
Church.
33
Chapter Five: The German Christians Become Nazi Educators
In order to understand the Kirchenkampf and its lasting significance it is essential
to understand how the German Christians acted as the main force of Nazi education
within the Protestant Church. The German Christians were, without a doubt, the driving
force for Nazi Gleichschaltung in the Protestant church. To the Nazi party, and to Hitler
in particular, the churches within Germany were seen as tools that could be used to
promote Nazi ideals after the initial synchronization with Nazi beliefs. Thus, it would
have done Hitler little good to totally destroy the churches, instead it would be easier to
reform them and benefit from the cultural influence they possessed.66 With this insight it
is not at all surprising that Hitler called for national church elections to be held on July
23, 1933. This was only seven months after his appointment to the office of chancellor.
The church elections of 1933 accomplished two goals that would be pivotal for
Hitler if he wished to bring the Protestant Church into line with his national goals. The
first goal the July 23 elections accomplished was the formation of a Reichskirche (Reich
Church). With Hitler’s church officials voted into office it was now a seamless transition
from the twenty-eight regional churches within Germany to become one national church.
The church elections also planted the Reich Church firmly in control of the German
Christians. All but three of the nation’s twenty-eight regional Protestant Churches had
governing bodies that were dominated by German Christians after the elections.67 With
the German Christians in control of the Protestant Church, the process of ideological
conformity soon followed.
66 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 166. 67 Bergen, “Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement,” 526
34
While Hitler’s church elections appeared to give the people of Germany a choice
in the leadership of the church, it was only an illusion. Hitler methodically planned out
the elections to work toward his goals. Bonhoeffer biographer, Eric Metaxas, sums up
Hitler’s church elections well, writing,
“There was little question who would win. Intimidation of every kind was brought
to bear on the situation, with the serious threat that anyone opposing the German
Christians could be accused of treason. And there was only one week between the
announcement and the elections, making it virtually impossible to organize a
viable opposition.”68
Hitler’s plan worked well. The German church hierarchy was now firmly in the
hands of the German Christians led by their newly elected Reichsbischof, Ludwig Muller.
By all accounts Muller was a gruff and crude individual who, “reduced his own power by
his total incompetence.”69 A combination of Muller’s devout Nazi membership, military
background and close relationship with Hitler made him the perfect candidate for the
head of the Nazi state church.70 Despite Muller’s almost total incompetence, he would
become the vocal chords for the German Christian movement as it sought to convert the
rest of the Protestant church to Nazism. As Bergen argued “His coarse, earthly manner
and conspicuous enthusiasm for the Nazi cause typified the German Christian leadership
style.”71 Following the lead of their elders in the church hierarchy, the lay people within
the German Christian movement began to promote their doctrine in the church.
It is crucial to understand that the German Christians were sincere adherents of
the Protestant Church; however, their ultimate goal was to create a seamless connection
68 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 180. 69 Bergen, “Germany is our Mission—Christ is our Strength,” 524. 70 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 16. 71 Ibid, 17.
35
between National Socialism and Christianity.72 In order to make this connection the
German Christians began to teach their foundational doctrines of anti-Semitism, anti-
feminism, militant masculinity, liberal theology, supra-confessionalism, and nationalism.
Orthodox doctrines such as the nature of the atonement and the use of the sacraments
mattered little to none in the eyes of the German Christians. To this heretical movement
all that mattered was advancing Nazi Gleichschaltung and bringing the rest of the
Protestant Church into line.
Many events reveal the German Christian attempts to educate the rest of
Protestant Germany about Nazi ideals, but one event defines the German Christians
educational drive within the Reich and the church. That event was the German Christian
rally the night of November 13, 1933 at the Sportpalast in Berlin. Twenty-thousand
people packed into the Sportpalast on the cold November night to support the German
Christian cause. The stadium was decorated to match the German Christian propaganda
that was about to be promoted with banners that read, “One Reich. One People. One
Church.”73 The key speaker for this rally was a high school teacher and German Christian
leader in Berlin named Reinhold Krause. In 1933 Krause revealed the true colors of the
German Christian movement as he took the stage and blasted certain pillars of the
Christian faith as unacceptable marks of Jewish influence. Krause ranted against the Old
Testament, the Apostle Paul, and the symbol of the cross.74 Fundamental elements and
doctrines of the Christian faith were expendable and offensive to Krause and many
German Christians. Although the German Christian movement had worn a more
72Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 171. 73 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 193. 74 Kyle Jantzen, Faith and Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler's Germany, (Fortress Press, 2008), 4-5.
36
moderate mask until this point, the heart behind the German Christian movement was
revealed that November night.
It was evident that Krause’s Nazi ideology was far more influential in the
formation of his theology than the Christian Bible. Krause’s attack on the Old Testament
was based on the idea that the Protestant Church needed to become an organization that
embraced and welcomed all National Socialist members. Reinhold said,
We must win over the flood of those returning to the church. For that to happen,
those people need to feel at home in the church. The first step in developing that
feeling of belonging is liberation from everything un-German in the worship
service and the confessions-- liberation from the Old Testament with its cheap
Jewish morality of exchange and its stories of cattle traders and pimps.75
Krause’s attempts to promote German Christian doctrine did not stop with attacks
on the Old Testament. He soon turned to the center piece of the Christian religion, Jesus.
Krause said that Jesus too must be presented as, “corresponding entirely with the
demands of National Socialism.”76 The New York Times reported that Krause began to
call for a “return to a heroic conception of Jesus” before asking Germans to picture Jesus
only as a, “fearless fighter and leader.”77 The foundational doctrines of the Christian faith
proved to not be very foundational to the German Christians. After Krause proposed to
redefine Jesus he turned his attention to the cross and crucifixion of Jesus. A San Antonio
newspaper reporting three days after the German Christian rally stated that Krause even
75 Reinhold Krause, Rede des Gauobmannes der Glaubensbewegung "Deutsche Christen" in Groß-Berlin
Dr. Krause: gehalten im Sportpalast am 13. November 1933 (nach doppeltem stenographischen Bericht),
6-7. (Translation Belongs to Doris Bergen. Cited in Twisted Cross) 76 Reinhold Krause, Rede des Gauobmannes der Glaubensbewegung "Deutsche Christen" in Groß-Berlin
Dr. Krause: gehalten im Sportpalast am 13. November 1933 (nach doppeltem stenographischen Bericht),
6-7. (Translation Belongs to Doris Bergen. Cited in Twisted Cross). 77 “Revision of Scripture is urged on Germans”, The New York Times, November 14, 1933.
37
went so far as to say that Germans should not, “exaggerate Christ Crucified.” 78 Over and
over again Krause demanded that the Protestant Church cleanse itself of all weaknesses
and hints of Jewishness and come into full doctrinal agreement with the Nazi party. The
stenographic record shows that the German Christian audience had sustained applause as
Krause promoted his Nazi doctrine behind the disguise of a German Christian platform.79
Reinhold Krause’s speech at the Sportpalast was the German Christian’s first
attempt at mass education of the German Protestant population. The German Christian
movement hoped to use the enthusiasm generated from the rally to move the Protestant
Church in direct coherence with the Nazi party. However, the German Christians
miscalculated the readiness of the German population to receive such a radical
transformation of the Christian faith. Instead of gaining traction in the Protestant Church
the educational rally at Sportpalast cost the German Christians initial support from the
German Protestant population. Newspapers across Germany ran the story of the radical
German Christian’s ideal and doctrines. According to Eric Metaxas:
It was one thing to wish for a church that was relevant to the German people and
that inspired Germans to rise for their defeat at the hand of the international
community and the godless Communists. But to go as far as Krause had gone,
mocking the Bible and St. Paul and so much else, was too much. 80
Following Krause’s fumble, many moderate members of the German Christian
party withdrew their membership. One Security Service report claimed that two hundred
and fifty pastors quit the movement in Württemberg alone.81 Despite the initial response
of horror to the German Christians’ radical ideas, the night at the Sportpalast should not
78 “Nazi German Christian Leaders Reaffirm That Semitic Influences Must Be Kept Out of New
Church", San Antonio Express, November 16, 1933, 1-3. 79 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 17. 80 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 194. 81 “Lagebericht Mai/Juni 1934,” T-175/415/2940753. (Translation belongs to Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross)
38
be seen as an educational failure on the part of the German Christian movement. Nor
should any historian think, as some do, that the night at the Sportpalast reduced the
German Christian movement to fragments or sentenced their project to doom.82 Despite
the German Christian’s miscalculation of the German populations’ readiness to receive
such radical doctrines, the night at the Sportpalast served as an educational event that
revealed to the German population, and primarily the German protestants, what a religion
intermixed with Nazism would look like. It would look exactly like what Reinhold
Krause had described. Indeed, by the late 1930’s Krause’s once appalling ideas were,
“common currency.”83
The German Christians also found other ways to educate the German population
outside of public rallies. The German Christian Movements also capitalized on the office
of military chaplaincy for educational opportunities. At one time it was assumed that
German Christians had little to no presence inside the office of German military
chaplains. In fact, Eberhard Muller once stated that German Christians were an
“insignificant minority,” who, “struggled without success for influence.”84 However,
more recent research seems to prove the opposite. Bergen argues that the German
Christians were far from irrelevant in the military chaplaincy.85 One way the German
Christians spread their pro-Nazi Christianity through the military was in their use of
religious literature.
82 Doris Bergen and Eric Metaxas make this argument in book examining the German Christian movement.
See Bergen, Twisted Cross, 18. and Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 194. 83 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 17. 84 Eberhard Muller, “Feldischof unter Hitler,” in Hermann Kunst ed, Gott labt sich nicht spotten Franz
Dohrmann, Feldsbiscoh unter Hitler, (Hanover: Germany, 1983), 23. Translated and cited in Doris Bergen,
“Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement” 85 Bergen, “Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement,” 523.
39
It has been well documented that the German Christians were willing to conform
to the Nazi ideas of race by jettisoning the Old Testament. This was even truer in the
military. The German military faced severe restrictions on religious literature delivered to
the front after 1942, but some materials were available, mainly New Testaments.86
Although the German Christian movement did not control the printing and regulation of
the religious material, the use of only the New Testaments does suggest, as Bergen
observes, a compromise between the propaganda ministry and the German Christian
agenda.87
Another example of the religious literature promoted by the German Christian
military chaplains is the Evangelisches Feldesangbuch (Protestant Soldier’s Songbook).
This hymnal contained fifty-six hymns, twenty-six songs, the Lord’s Prayer, and a prayer
for the Führer, Volk, and military.88 This song book was filled with elements that fueled
the German Christian message. Many of the hymns in the Songbook displayed the
German Christians preoccupation with purging Hebraisms and references to the Old
Testament from their Protestant hymns.89 All of the songs within the Feldesangbuch
were purified of any “Hosannas” and “Hallelujahs”. There was one exception, that being
the “Hallelujah” found in the second stanza of the famous Christmas carol “Silent Night.”
90 The Songbook was filled with standard German Christian hymns. They promoted
loyalty to God, Hitler, and the Reich. At the end of the “Holy God We Praise Thy
Name,” the words were added, “May our slogan ever be: “Loyalty to the Führer, the
86 Bergen, “Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement,”, 528. 87 Ibid, 529. 88 The Evangelisches Feldgesangbuch, (Berlin,1939). 89 Bergen, “Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement,” 530. 90 “Stille Nacht,” Evangelisches Feldeesangbuch, 59.
40
Volk, and the Reich.”91 With things like the intentional omission of the Old Testament
and the racially purified hymnals, the German Christians served as Nazi religious
educators among the Protestant soldiers on the front lines.
Another form of German Christian education is found in the writings of German
Christian leaders. Perhaps the most famous of these is the work of Reich Bishop Ludwig
Muller. In 1936 Muller published, God’s Word in German. In his work Muller rewrote
the entire Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ instructional words became Muller’s instructional
words. Christ’s words, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” became
Muller’s words, “Happy is the man who is always sociable. He will amount to something
in the world.”92 Writings such as Muller’s reveal the extent to which German Christian
leaders were willing to go to educate Germans with proper Nazi theology.
There is one more form of education that must be examined; the most obvious
avenue for German Christian propaganda: sermons. When the German Christians stood to
preach, everyone in hearing distance of their words would be indoctrinated with the
German Christian heresy. It was typical for German Christian pastors to preach hate filled
messages against Judaism and communism. One German Christian’s sermon from 1942
stated:
Judaism has been dashed to pieces on the person of Christ. And the Soviet state
too shatter on Christ, this state that crucified Christ a second time that erected a
monument to Judas Iscariot-- and has demanded the blood of thousands upon
thousands of martyrs. So we stand in the midst of the fires of the world as
protectors and defenders of the German Christian legacy. We stand before God as
Germans and as Christians. 93
91 “Grober Gott”, wir Loben Dich,” no. 19, Evangelisches Feldesangbuch, 36. 92 Ludwig Muller, God’s Word in German, 386. In Solberg, A Church Undone, 386. 93 Niemann Christentum und Deutschtum Predigt im Reformationsmonat, Theologischer Arbentsbrief,
October 1, 1942. Translated and cited in Bergen , “Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement,” 10-13.
41
Although the German Christian pastors preached particularly hateful messages,
they also advanced their messages just as much through what they prohibited in their
sermons. German Christian military chaplain superintendent Heinrich Lonicer
supervised the messages that other chaplains preached. One historian reports that in 1942
Lonicer criticized a chaplain’s sermon as, “too Christian.” He claimed it was acceptable
to “preach God but not Christ.” Lonicer also objected to praying in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”94
The German Christians were the National Socialists of the Protestant Church.
When the Nazis began bringing German society into line with their ideology the
Protestant Church was not exempt from expectation of conformity. However, the Nazis
did not have to expend much energy to promote Nazi doctrine in the churches. They
found a movement all too willing to take up the swastika and move it to predominance in
the Protestant Church. The German Christians were nothing more than Nazi educators
who hid themselves behind the cross of Christ but pledged loyalty to Hitler and
Volk. Without doubt, the German Christian Faith Movement was the driving force of
Gleichschaltung in the German Protestant Church.
94 Bergen, “Chaplaincy and the Christian Movement,” 525.
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Chapter Six: Nazi Resistance and the Confessing Church
The German Christians may represent the worst of the Christian faith during the
Third Reich, but thankfully there were many Germans who stood up to fight the rising
tide of National Socialism. A group of German Pastors and Christians stood together
against the heresy of the racially motivated German Christians and declared allegiance to
orthodoxy and Christ alone. Much of the German Christians’ early activity caught the
attention of more conservative pastors and theologians within the German Church;
however, the German Christians’ preoccupations with race and Volk seem to be the
turning points on which the Kirchenkampf was formed.
With new German Christian leaders firmly in control of the direction of the
church a push toward National Socialist ideals began. In September, the newly elected
leaders attempted to apply the restrictions of the Aryan Paragraph to the Protestant
Church.95 The Aryan Paragraph was a newly instituted governmental requirement that
excluded non-Aryans from any civil service positions. 96 The second clause of the first
paragraph in the Aryan Paragraph stated that, “Those of Non-Aryan decent or married to
someone of Non-Aryan decent are not to be called clergy.”97 This clause would exclude
about thirty-five of Germany’s 18,000 pastors.98 It seems almost preposterous that an
action that affected such a small portion of Germany's pastors would be the thing that
lead to the greatest church division and struggle since the Reformation. The German
Christian leaders did not yet know it, but in their attempt to further Nazi doctrine they
95 Erickson, Theologians under Hitler, 48. 96 Ulrich Duchrow, “The Confessing Church, and the Ecumenical Movement,” The Ecumenical Review 33,
no. 3 (April 2010): 267. 97 The Aryan Paragraph in the Churches and Responses. See Solberg, A Church Undone, 57. 98 Erickson, Theologians under Hitler, 48.
43
had just formed the basis for the opposition that would resist Gleichschaltung in the
Protestant church.
Early on, some pastors and theologians in the Protestant Church had decided that
allegiance to a racially constructed church would not be an option should Nazi doctrine
infiltrate the church. One example of those men was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Many men
stood in opposition to the Nazi regime, but Bonhoeffer’s life and actions in opposition to
the German Christians and the Nazi regime have become the symbol of what it means to
stand in the face of opposition. One of Bonhoeffer’s biographers notes that he had
concluded by August 1933 that, “beyond doubt that there could be no question of
belonging to a church that excluded the Jews.”99 Bonhoeffer was positive that any church
that agreed to anything as preposterous as the Aryan Paragraph would usher in a time of
confession for the true church and warrant immediate action from the true Christians
within the false church. In fact, Bonhoeffer insisted that the only proper response to such
an act would be an immediate “exodus” to maintain theological consistency.100
In light of the push to conform to the racial ideals set forth by the Nazi Aryan
Paragraph, Bonhoeffer wrote his lifelong friend and mentor, Karl Barth, seeking help and
support for what Bonhoeffer saw as status confessionis (state of Confessing). In other
words, Bonhoeffer was ready to separate from the German Evangelical Church and he
was looking to Barth for support. Bonhoeffer wrote with passion as he appealed to Barth.
“The can be no doubt at all that the status confessionis has arrived,”101 Bonhoeffer wrote.
However, it became clear that not all were as convinced that the time for confessional
division had arrived.
99 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 273. 100 Ibid, 308. 101 Letter to Barth (9 September 1933) In No Rusty Swords, 230.
44
In their correspondence it became obvious that Barth did not have the same
resolve to seek an open schism. Barth replied to Bonhoeffer, “I am for waiting. When the
breach comes, it must come from the other side.”102 Barth wanted to wait for a greater
division point than racially exclusion. Perhaps Barth wanted to call forth repentance from
within the established church.103 Either way Barth decided, as Eberhard Bethge writes,
“to wait on even greater heresies than the racial conformity of the civil service law.”104
Although Germany’s most famed theologian since Luther himself, Karl Barth, lacked the
initial resolve seen in Bonhoeffer, many others agreed with Bonhoeffer. The time to act
was now.
The initial response to the Institution of the Aryan Paragraph was the formation of
the Pastor’s Emergency League (Pfarrernotbund).105 The leader of the movement was
Martin Niemoller, a prominent German pastor who was opposed to the Nazification of
the German Church struggle. Out of this movement the Confessing Church was born. In
the last days of May 1934 the Pastor’s Emergency league met in Barmen to discuss the
formations and beliefs of the true German church.
The document produced at Barmen would be one of the most significant
theological treatises of the twentieth century, and it symbolized the largest form of
resistance the Nazis had faced to date. The drafting and acceptance of the Barmen
Declaration represented the resistance of the Protestant church to Nazi doctrine and
ideology. At least a portion of the Protestant Church in Germany was resisting
Gleichschaltung. Upon reading the document, the language of resistance becomes clear.
102 Letter to Bonhoeffer (11 September 1933) In No Rusty Swords, 231. 103 Jordan Baylor, “The Aryan Clause, The Confessing Church, and the Ecumenical Movement,” 268. 104 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 273. 105 Erickson, Theologians Under Hitler, 48.
45
Although the movement started as a response to racial exclusion, the Barmen
Declaration now voiced a total resistance of Nazification and swore allegiance to Christ
alone. For example, the Declaration calls believers to support pastors who are loyal to the
confessions of the real Christian faith.106 In another instance the Declaration counters
Nazi claims of unification as one Volk, writing, we are “bound together by the confession
of the Lord one of the, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.107 In article 8.07 the
Confessing Church claims that the German Christian doctrine, which is subsequently
Nazi doctrine, has grievously imperiled the German Evangelical Church.108 The Barmen
Declaration is a repetitive attack on the Nazification of the German church and the
educations of the Nazi movement. In a country where many were swearing an oath of
loyalty to Hitler, der Führer, the Confessing church was swearing loyalty to Christ alone.
As Keith Clements notes, “The basic issue (of the Declaration) was clear enough: the
Christian Church had to declare its allegiance and its identity in terms of the gospel and
not the dictates of the state or nationalistic impulses.”109
The spirit of the Barmen Declaration was accurately summarized by Dietrich
Bonhoeffer some years later in his milestone work, The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer
wrote, “The Church is not to be a national community like old Israel, but a community of
believers without political or national ties.”110 The German Christians may have wanted
the church to be a political ally to the Nazis, but the Confessing Church had no such
aspirations.
106 “Barmen Declaration.” http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/barmen.htm. Accessed January 28, 2016 107 “Barmen Declaration.” 108 Ibid. 109 Keith Clements, “Barmen and the Ecumenical Movement,” 8. 110 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 141.
46
The Confessing Church held another synod later in the year of 1934 in which they
were bolder in their opposition to the Nazi run state church. The Second Confessing
Synod reads, “We summon the Christian communities, their pastors and elder, to accept
no directives from the present Church government and its authorities and to decline
cooperation with those who wish to remain obedient to this ecclesiastical governance.111
The Confessing Church hoped to influence the entire German Protestant Church to
denounce any and all relationships with those loyal to the Nazi state church and the
German Christians. The resistance of the Confessing Church was no small force.
The Confessing Church went on to become what Bonhoeffer called a “spoke in
the wheel of government.”112 Bonhoeffer meant that the spoke would become a force of
opposition to the movement of the entire wheel. Bonhoeffer thought that this kind of
opposition to the state from the church was warranted when “the church sees the state fail
in its functions of creating law and order.”113 Ultimately, however, Bonhoeffer and
several other Confessing Church proponents went on to lose their lives for opposing the
Nazi state.
The German Christians had originally intended to merge the German Evangelical
Church with the higher aspirations of the Nazi German state; however, in an attempt to
force Nazi ideology onto the Protestant Church, the German Christians woke the sleeping
giant of Christian orthodoxy. The German Christians, although unintentionally, provoked
the German church struggle and set off a war for the Protestant Church inside of
111 Except from the Declaration of the Second Confessing Synod of the German Protestant Church in
Berlin-Dahlem (October 20, 1934). 112 Bonhoeffer, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” In No Rusty Swords, 225. 113 Ibid.
47
Germany between 1933 and 1945 because of their goals to bring the German Protestant
Church into line with Nazi ideology.
48
Conclusion
The Kirchenkampf was a significant part of German history. It involved two
movements within the German Protestant church that struggled to attain power between
1933 and 1945. Although neither side achieved a decisive victory, the Confessing Church
won by default when Germany surrendered in 1945. With the Nazi party in shambles the
German Christian movement had no government to provide legitimacy to its radical
doctrines. Orthodoxy prevailed and the Confessing Church’s doctrines would continue to
be the guiding principles of the German Evangelical Church. Despite fading into
oblivion, the legacy of the German Christian Movement is significant.
The German Christian response to defeat was varying. In some cases German
Christians continued to proclaim their radical doctrines as truth and refused to recant.
Other members of the movement recanted half-heartedly. Still other German Christian
members claimed ignorance all together.114 In some cases the defiance of the German
Christians even went so far as to deny that the Holocaust had even happened.115
However, it should not be assumed that the German Christian’s ideals simply vanished.
Some of the German Christians’ doctrines and foundations were still readily
accepted in the German church, after all many of the German Christians’ ideas were
derived from principles already readily found in German culture. The doctrines that
easily survived and flourished in the postwar German church were the ones that centered
on the German Christian’s ideas of gender.116 Not only did elements of the German
Christian movement’s doctrine survive, but many pastors and leaders did as well.
114 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 220-222. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid, 224.
49
The German Christian movement may have died in 1945, but the people who
were the soldiers of the movement continued on in their normal roles in the Protestant
Church. While some pastors who subscribed to the German Christian movement were
dismissed, for the most part German Christian pastors remained.117 It is therefore easy to
see that the German Christian movement faded with the fall of the National Socialist
party and began to assimilate back into the orthodox Protestant Church, but it did not
disappear altogether. Nevertheless, despite continuity in the established church the
German Christian movement should not be remembered in a positive light.
The German Christian Faith Movement is a stark reminder of what happens when
a religious faith is blinded by the promises of government and deceived to follow the
ramblings of men and nationalism. The German Christians formed a church structure that
based membership solely on the race and ethnicity of people. The movement also
demeaned women and promoted males as the superior gender. Lastly, the German
Christian movement blatantly disregarded and in some cases destroyed Christian
scriptures. These failures qualify the German Christians as heretics and the movement
should be remembered in no other light. Doris Bergen summarizes this argument well
writing, “For genuine Christians, (the) German Christian(s) represented heresy of the
worst sort.”118 Indeed for genuine Christians, the German Christian movement was
anything but Christian. The legacy of the German Christians should always be
remembered as a betrayal of the worst kind.
117 Luke Fenwick, “The Protestant Churches in Saxony-Anhalt in the Shadow of the German Christian
Movement and National Socialism, 1945-1949,” Church History 82, no. 4 (December 2013), 888-890. 118 Bergen, Twisted Cross, 229.
50
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